Perspectives on the beautiful game of soccer; fueled by enormous amounts of coffee

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Few home games

Many Galaxy fans are awaiting David Beckham's arrival. Now that Beckham's contract is almost over, we're weeks away from Becks' arrival.

But his recent call-up to England could affect future Galaxy home games as Beckham could play as little as three regular-season home games. I wrote about that topic for my Press-Enterprise column. My editor there asked me about it last week when an AP story ran about it and wanted me to do some more digging. I talked to Alexi Lalas yesterday and also got in touch with a season-ticket holder. Surprisingly enough, the guy I talked to was cool with Becks missing a lot of games.

I found a couple of interesting things when researching this story:

- All the England/Galaxy conflicts involve games at Home Depot Center - four Galaxy home games and one Chivas USA home game. I find it hard to believe that this was unintentional. The league wanted fans outside of L.A. to have a chance of seeing Beckham and that won't be affected. But the local fans are the ones who will suffer.

- Prior to the season, the Galaxy offered a "Beckham Pack" where fans got one ticket to the FC Dallas game on April 12 and a ticket to the Galaxy-Chivas USA game on Aug. 23 and reminded fans that short of buying season tickets "this deal is the only way to guarantee yourself the chance to see David Beckham at The Home Depot Center in a Galaxy uniform." But now, a similar Beckham pack has changed the second game: fans can buy tickets to Sunday's game and also get a ticket to the Galaxy-RSL game on Sept. 1. Of course, now they remind fans that Becks is scheduled but not guaranteed to play.

- England plays at home on Sept. 12 and the Galaxy has a game against Chivas on the 13th and Houston on the 16th. The Chivas game is out of the question but he could probably play against Houston. That's four days in between games and even with the 6,000-mile trip, it's doable.